We woke up early this day in an attempt to leave the hotel early as well. As soon as we walked out of the room we saw it was raining. We had a nice breakfast at a local restaurant a few feet away from the hotel, and then came back to grab our bikes and start the ride. But as soon as we left the room we discovered my uncle’s front tire was flat.
We unassembled everything and fixed the tire, which took us a while since the hole was quiet hard to find. By this time the sun had appeared already.
We still had to inflate his tire properly, so we looked for a tire shop or a mechanic which had a compressor we could use. We saw a place called Steve’s Garage and decided to go in. To our surprise, they were building a custom car which had the cover of an vehicle from the 1950s, but with a Corvette engine! There were three friends working on it and we spent some good time chatting about the car and our journey.
After inflating the tire and saying good bye to the folks at the shop we finally were on our way towards Moriarty, our planned destination.
WE rode 40 miles pretty much straight without stopping for anything other than water. There wasn’t much to stop for anyways. When we completed these 40 miles we arrived at a nice convenience shop, and had lunch. To our surprise, on our way out we notice my uncle’s front tire was flat again. You know what happened next: disassemble, finding hole, apply patch, change tube, assemble tire, inflate tire.
We then were able to progress twenty more miles. My uncle noticed his front tire was getting flat again, so we added more pressure to arrive on the next gas station where we one more time fixed the tire.
By this time it was already almost dark and temperatures were dropping fast. I bought a warmer pair of gloves and put another jacket. My uncle also prepared to ride in the cold desert night with pants and thick gloves. We then left the gas station to complete the remaining twenty miles.
These last miles were hard. I was shivering and riding as fast as possible, but from time to time I would stop and wait for my uncle since he was not confident in his tires and riding slower. Suddenly I noticed we had reached the top of a mountain and our destination, which was still eighteen miles away, could be seen down in the valley. We rode downhill for the last miles, pretty much just concentrating in keeping the bicycle on track.
After about two hours riding in those conditions we arrived in Moriarty. We looked for the hotel location and saw there was a small shop where we could get food.
Guess what happened just before arriving in the shop… that’s right, one more flat tire. This time my uncle’s rear tire. We walked the bike to the shop, go some canned soups which were the only thing available that resembled diner, and then went outside again to fix the tire one more time.
Finally we were able to ride to the hotel and arrived about eleven thirty. The owner was very nice and received us very well. He promised to prepare us an omelet the following morning, and then handed us our hotel keys.
As soon as we got to the room we did everything we had to do as fast as we could and went to sleep. That was a very hard day, but one that we had to go through in order to approach our next destination, the city of Albuquerque.
